New report: Nothing Will Ever Be Enough
The new report by The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants and HIAS Israel focuses on how the Population and Immigration Authority (PIA) handles the asylum requests of Eritrean citizens residing in Israel who make up the majority (70 percent) of asylum seekers in Israel.
This paper follows several reports issued in recent years examining the persistent failure of the Israeli asylum system in adjudicating asylum claims. The Israeli Supreme Court and State Comptroller have voiced their criticism on the matter as well. The report shows how, since 2009, when the Ministry of Interior assumed the responsibility for examining asylum applications in Israel, and until this day, the asylum system in Israel has been aimed toward rejecting the applications of Eritreans rather than fairly examining them.
As will be expounded on below, in 2019, following a series of legal proceedings, PIA committed to reexamining all the asylum cases of Eritreans in Israel based on “new” standards it implemented to scrutinize the applications. However, in reality, these guidelines continue to adopt narrow and incorrect interpretation of the Refugee Convention; this interpretation has been previously rejected by the Court of Appeals, established to examine immigration-related cases in Israel.
Alongside a legal and historical overview, this report includes an in-depth examination of dozens of decisions to reject the applications of Eritrean asylum seekers. These decisions were reached over the past two years based on the “new standards. This examination leads to a conclusion that these “new” standards are anything but new. As a result, like what has occurred over the past decade, Israel repeatedly rejected the asylum applications of individuals who would have been recognized as refugees in any country with a fair asylum system.
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab